“If I were you,” said the Psammead, “I should ask the Amulet about that. It’s a dangerous thing, trying to live in a time that’s not your own. You can’t breathe an air that’s thousands of centuries ahead of your lungs without feeling the effects of it, sooner or later. Prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet.”
“Oh, _what_ a dream!” cried the learned gentleman. “Dear children, if you love me—and I think you do, in dreams and out of them—prepare the mystic circle and consult the Amulet!”
They did. As once before, when the sun had shone in August splendour, they crouched in a circle on the floor. Now the air outside was thick and yellow with the fog that by some strange decree always attends the Cattle Show week. And in the street costers were shouting. “Ur Hekau Setcheh,” Jane said the Name of Power. And instantly the light went out, and all the sounds went out too, so that there was a silence and a darkness, both deeper than any darkness or silence that you have ever even dreamed of imagining. It was like being deaf or blind, only darker and quieter even than that.
Then out of that vast darkness and silence came a light and a voice. The light was too faint to see anything by, and the voice was too small for you to hear what it said. But the light and the voice grew. And the light was the light that no man may look on and live, and the voice was the sweetest and most terrible voice in the world. The children cast down their eyes. And so did everyone.
“I speak,” said the voice. “What is it that you would hear?”
There was a pause. Everyone was afraid to speak.
“What are we to do about Rekh-marā?” said Robert suddenly and abruptly. “Shall he go back through the Amulet to his own time, or—”
“No one can pass through the Amulet now,” said the beautiful, terrible voice, “to any land or any time. Only when it was imperfect could such things be. But men may pass through the perfect charm to the perfect union, which is not of time or space.”
“Would you be so very kind,” said Anthea tremulously, “as to speak so that we can understand you? The Psammead said something about Rekh-marā not being able to live here, and if he can’t get back—” She stopped, her heart was beating desperately in her throat, as it seemed.